


let me give you my life

by singingtomysoul



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: 30 Kisses Challenge, Angst and Fluff and Smut, BDSM, Drug Use, M/M, No Safeword, anti-trans slur, bad people having feeeeelings, blood mention, child abuse mention, unhealthy relationship dynamics, unimportant character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-05 15:08:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1822861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singingtomysoul/pseuds/singingtomysoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Pinned to the back of Mac's battered file, written in Dennis's most elegant hand, are a set of notes he calls The Long Game.</i> </p>
<p>30 kisses from two codependent losers across most of a lifetime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. conspiracy/intrigue

**Author's Note:**

> 30 kisses fic, alpha set. 
> 
> Title is from "Take Me to Church" by Hozier.

Pinned to the back of Mac's battered file, written in Dennis's most elegant hand, are a set of notes he calls The Long Game.

"Tried to kiss me today. He didn't say a word when I pulled back. He was covered in trash and smelled like shit - tremendous faux pas on his part. Never show your hand unless you're going to play it right then."

These are the times he knows he's right to keep the files. New information is never really new, it's just old information with better instructions. It would have taken months of shoddy, incomplete data to put together what, with his previous notes, he compiles in a few days.

"The D.E.N.N.I.S. system is designed for women. Weak, feeble women I've collected in quantity and abundance. Mac is not only a man, he's a man with misguided convictions. Stubborn ones. A new plan is called for. An ultimate goal. In order to succeed, in this man's mind I must supplant God himself."

Consistent review and modification of The Long Game is an important ritual. Dennis has a pen with purple ink for the task. He keeps meticulous notes, time-stamped to the hour and minute. As he chronicles the way the end of a pencil or straw traces Mac's lips, the way his voice quavers when Dennis touches his shoulder, he imagines the fruits of his efforts.

The sound Mac will make when he finally tugs Dennis closer. The mouth helplessly pressed against his bare chest, against the fabric of his jeans. Eyes that look up wet and helpless, seeking salvation.

Dennis always winds up palming off for his own hidden camera's benefit, whispering a name so softly that Mac will never quite shake the question of whether or not it's his own. He'll leave one of those tapes for his roommate to "find", one day. And that's only step three.

He always finishes with a strangled gasp, a warmth that flushes from his neck down to his toes. They're some of the best orgasms he's ever had. As he lays back against the bed, coming down from the high, he thinks of what a gift it is that Mac is so obsessed with him.


	2. mask

The back room still smells like acetone. Mac taps his foot, huffing impatiently from the doorway as Dennis untangles himself from where Charlie has fallen asleep in his lap. 

He sits up too fast and his fingers find his temples as he hisses. His nails scrape where the skin is still raw, and he hisses again.

Mac sighs, swallowing something judgmental, and offers Dennis his arm. They hobble to the car, driving home in three am quiet. They're almost there when Dennis mumbles something unintelligible, voice guilty like a five year old.

"What?"

"Do I really look like a monster?"

"Jesus Christ, dude." 

There's silence the rest of the way, at least mostly - Dennis sighs dramatically as they climb the steps to the apartment, then again as he flops onto the couch, pressing his cheek to it like he's never felt anything so soft.

"I just," he murmurs to no one, still fume-addled. "I just try really hard, I'm...trying..."

Mac shakes his head, sinking onto the cushion beside him. His fingers find Dennis's shoulder, patting awkwardly, then rubbing when that yields no reaction. "Just. Do not burn your face off, man. Fuck."

"I didn't know what to do."

Mac sighs, and Dennis must still have paint thinner on his clothes or something, because he's only just realizing he's touching his roommate and the air feels all fuzzy and warm. 

"If I were a monster, would I be like the sexy kind, or the kind that -"

Mac doesn't even think of what he's doing as he leans in, presses his lips to Dennis's forehead. They ghost along the hairline where it's been cut too dark and too spiky, they graze the raw burns across his face. 

Even under the fading chemical smell, Mac can smell too-expensive cologne. He draws back quickly, heart hammering, praying Dennis is too tired to notice.

He notices. He looks up at Mac, straight into his eyes. Mac doesn't know if he's ever seen his best friend grateful before, at least not like this, where every little movement is like an open wound.

"Get some sleep," he says, mumbling and guilty. He makes a break for his room before Dennis can ask him to stay on the couch any longer.


	3. mortality/mortal coil

"So I've been reading about this stuff -"

"Oh Jesus, here we go."

Mac rolls his eyes, snuggling back against the pillows until he gets comfortable. "I think there's supposed to be like a word we say? For when it's getting out of hand?"

"We're not doing that." Dennis is trying to sound instructional, instead of just bossy, and it's not working. "We are striving for authenticity."

"Authentic to what? Is there a not-authentic way to be tied to a bed?"

Dennis ignores him, his attention on lacing the rope through the headboard. It's quiet for a few moments, and then Mac's realizing that just like that, Dennis is in some other place, one of the weird spots in his head where he's played this scene out until he knows it by heart.

It's subtle, the place he's gone to - even Mac might have mistook it for the way he looks when he's scheming, or when he's dipped down into cold fury, except there's something smoother. Less peacocking, more the quiet ease of something already proven and part of himself.

Dennis presses a kiss to the inside of Mac's wrist before he coils the rope around it. "Relax. I've done this before."

"Yeah," Mac agrees, voice scratchy with anticipation.

The knot is just tight enough, a firm press against his wrist. He flexes experimentally, and feels the warmth start to pool in his belly at the slight give.

"Good boy." Dennis's eyes flit over his face, and he pauses. "Sweet boy." 

Mac feels his cock stir. There are things Dennis only says on nights like this, and they're the best part of all of it. He'd spent an evening once with a hand slowly, tortuously working Mac's cock, while the other hand let two fingers rest at the pulse of Mac's neck, pressing down ever so slightly while he hissed things about the power to control a man's very breath. 

He'd called him "my angel," and that was when Mac came.

Mac should probably be afraid. He's afraid of a lot of things, of things way less dangerous than this: of taking too long a fall or too sharp a curve, of the wrong person getting in his face. Of being laughed at most of all, probably, if he thinks about it - which he doesn't. 

And he was scared of wanting this, for a long time, but maybe what he should be afraid of is the way Dennis is looking at him. 

"You can knot them a little tighter, maybe," he says.

And just as quickly, the look on Dennis's face is something like awe.


	4. stolen identity

They watch the man die in the alleyway - the hands raised in the air in protest, the knife hard in his side. Blood sprays across the ground. Mac looks on with the detachment of a two-time felon father, a lifetime playing in dirty back streets full of dangerous people and Charlie as his only buffer. 

Dennis is breathing a little heavy, eyes glassy but fixed. His hand nudges Mac's, fingertips brushing like the start of a kiss, but either he was shifting position or Mac was imagining it because then it's gone again.

"Rough," Mac says, whistling.

"Mmm." Dennis bites his lip, voice wavering just once, so slightly that no one else would notice. "So it ends. One more life spilling fruitlessly onto the stones of a forgotten alley. So quick. So final."

"You're weird, dude," Mac mutters, and goes to pour himself a drink.

\---

He's already forgotten the man's face a few days later. Dennis remembers every detail, and he clutches Brian LaFeve's wallet for dear life, like a talisman, like a responsibility.

"Do you maybe think," he asks on the ride to the game, "do you suppose that if you take what another man owns, if you control the things that are his, that a little bit of him belongs to you?"

"Do I own you because I cut the sleeves off your old t-shirts?" 

"You're missing my point."

\---

Mac isn't sure why he says "Vic Vinegar". Vic is a real estate agent and a proud homosexual. He's trophy husband to a vain but secretly generous man who wears the kind of sweaters you take on a boat. He's not a violent man, but he has a lot of passion.

Maybe this is a young Vic. Maybe before Vic met his husband and found his calling, he channeled his gym-rat physique into defending a handsome business mogul and his ugly shrew of a wife. Maybe he pined silently until he had to leave, had to break his own heart to sew it back together again.

If that's the way this part goes, then Vic must always be trying to impress.

\---

"I know my limits," Mac hisses. "This is my limit. I quit."

He expects the theatrics, the weird fury that always seems to come lately when Dennis doesn't get his way. He doesn't expect the darker thing behind those eyes, the cold hollow thing that makes him feel like a traitor.

"You've got no commitment, Vinegar! You're finished! You're never going to get anywhere in life!"

Maybe it's the hardest thing in the world for Vic to walk away, to leave moments before he's cut off anyway. Bodyguards protect people. They keep them safe from dangerous back alleys and creepy locker rooms, they cool situations down before they go too far. They get people out of jams.

Maybe he feels like he's breaking a promise.

\---

Ever since the reunion, something inside him feels cold. Not empty-cold, he's used to that, but angry-cold. The kind that runs like ice and makes you want to crush something in your fist.

Part of him doesn't expect Mac to keep walking. It's not often that he's left alone to just _think._ It's like moving around when a room first goes black, and you still need to get used to shapes. The floor isn't quite where it should be. 

A god without minions, a king without subjects is -

A man died in an alley, and his wallet doesn't belong to him anymore. And maybe Dennis should have taken Mac's hand, but it doesn't matter. Brian LaFeve isn't a god. He's a very, very powerful man, and he has no limits. And he's never needed anyone to understand his decisions.

"All right, LaFeve, time to put your money where your mouth is."

He's been doing this alone for a very long time.


	5. inner child/inner demons

Mac doesn't remember how old he was when his father left, just that he wasn't ready. There were no signs or clues, nothing to prepare him - just the biggest, strongest pair of arms Mac knew, arms that hugged him and hugged his mom as he said he'd be right back. He just had to settle this deal, and he'd be home in an hour. Mac was in charge of protecting the house while he was gone.

He wasn't home in one hour or three or twelve, and Mac's mom brought out the cigarettes she hadn't smoked in half a year. She took drag after drag all the way down to the filter, and she didn't answer questions or really say much at all. But Mac wasn't allowed to leave the house - not even to go down the road to Charlie's - because something dangerous might have happened. They might not be safe anymore. And then he felt guilty, remembering his dad had left him in charge.

When the police came and told them where his dad had gone, he asked if they were safe now. "You tell me," his mother said, and took another puff. But he couldn't, because if his dad was in the place that bad people went, were they ever safe at all? Were the bad things in his house or outside of it? What if they were everywhere? 

He decided if he didn't know he'd make up the answer. He was too little to stop them then. But one day he'd have stronger arms than his dad ever did, and he'd be the one to put the bad people in prison. And if he turned out bad too then he'd never, ever get caught.

\---

Dennis doesn't remember his father being there, not even when he was. He was always in Tokyo or Paris, or somewhere in Vietnam, so Dennis always thought of him as a kind of father-shaped hole in a chair no one else was allowed to sit in.

Sometimes a short, fat, loud man came home to take things from him, and to yell when his mother said he was handsome and special. The man and his mother would yell for hours, or days sometimes, and the only good part was it meant no one was yelling at him or Dee. So they'd huddle together under blanket tents and pretend they were orphans, born from nothing and needing no one but each other. And when Dennis said "sometimes I look at him and I don't even think that could be my father," Dee nodded like she understood.

"Sometimes I wish the same thing about mom."

They fought about that, but only a little. His mother loved him. She told him all the ways he was better than everyone, that he'd grow up one day to be a socialite or an executive, maybe even to be president. But she didn't ever bring the presents back on Christmas. And that one time he got upset and said Dee wasn't fat, just the same size he was, she'd slapped him.

Dennis imagined all the things he'd be one day, when he'd become as rich and powerful and handsome as he could get. But he wouldn't be a businessman. He'd be president, maybe, but why not a king? Or a god, like something out of the Nibelung - because those were only stories, but so was he and Dee as brave orphans, and that already felt half-true. (But he was braver and better than Dee. He was, he really was.)

Dennis's father wasn't there, and when he was there Dennis imagined he was gone again. His mother's smile was blank when she told him he was beautiful, and cold when he hugged her. (She never kissed him, flinched back once when he tried.) When he said her nose was big and hooked like a bird's, Dee cried in her room all day and wouldn't see him. And after a while, it didn't matter if no one was there.

Neither was he.

\---

Mac talked to God a lot by the time he was eleven. Part of it was because of the guilt, maybe, but part of it was because God was always there. Even if you didn't want him watching, he was, waiting to decide if you'd done the right thing. There were clear rules, things that made you righteous. Things that made you a man. All you had to do was listen, even if no one really ever said "good job."

So Mac learned the songs in church, he went to the confessions, and he waited for the gnawing, aching thing in his stomach to stop. He said 'Our Father' and called the priest 'father' and tried to find the right instructions in a thick black book full of tiny words that seemed to go on forever.

He watched The Karate Kid backwards and forwards, trying to learn by watching, but he always felt too small for any punch he threw to make a dent. There was never money for a real lesson anyway.

\---

Mac met the boy under the bleachers when he was fifteen, a skinny guy who wore blush and looked down his nose when he talked. He'd bought pot once or twice, and then he came back trying to scam it free. What wound up really happening was they started talking.

"The way I see it is, you have a pretty sweet setup after ratting those guys out, but you're still playing too small. You've cornered the market, now you can expand your operation."

"My operation's fine," Mac retorted, not sure why his face felt hot. "I'm making tons of money. I'm loaded."

"Look, you've done good." An arm went around his shoulder, like this was something familiar. Like he'd always been there. "You have potential. But you play everything so small - and you're off-putting, no one likes a snitch. Your muscle's not scary, just creepy; he's like a dead possum that never showered. You need someone to help you come up with ideas. Smooth things over, do the talking for you."

"And I do what, comp your dime bag?"

"You'll never even notice the loss."

The plan lost them half of their supply, and got him and Charlie suspended for two weeks. Mac spent the first day down by the tracks with Charlie, and his mother never knew the difference. He'd pick things back up, he decided, he'd go back to the old system when he returned, and he wouldn't listen to stupid rich kids again.

But that night at the house, the phone rang.

"Okay, I think I know where I miscalculated. First of all, when you tell me you can do a roundhouse kick, I should probably ask you to demonstrate."

They talked for nearly two hours until Mac's mom told him to shut up and go to bed. Dennis called every night that week.

\---

Dennis has never felt like he was really there.

He keeps a room filled with reminders of who he is. The model collection of cars he'll only ever own in miniature. Drawers full of tapes labeled with half-remembered names. Four files in a hidden compartment, stuffed to bursting with four lives he has vowed to always come out smarter than, better than. (The fifth file is under lock and key where no one else can find it.)

Sometimes the tapes don't matter, though, sometimes they feel like a blur of hollow words, like when you say 'cup' two dozen times until it sounds weird and you forget what it means. That's when Dennis opens his phone.

'3:00 check-in found this sweet new shirt at the thrift place'

'4:30 check-in grocery run you want anything?'

'7:00 check-in how's the date going'

At least part of him must be there, because someone is always looking for him.


	6. idol

"You ask this every year, dude - we are not going to your weird fetish party."

Dennis scoffs, dramatically arching a brow. Although that might just be to adjust how he's penciling it. "'Fetish party.' As if I'd let you cling to my heels on a night of exploration and conquest. This is theatre, Mac."

"Jesus Christ, here we go."

"This is a story that has survived, for forty years, as a quintessential Halloween experience. More than that, a quintessential _college_ experience. Many a young woman out from Mommy and Daddy's thumb has found her sexual awakening under those dim lights."

"It is a show about a tranny who makes a Frankenstein," Mac sighs. "And you like it because you don't need to think of a dumb reason you're wearing women's underwear."

Dennis air-kisses in the mirror, before he puckers to adjust his lipstick pencil. "I don't need a reason to excel in any kind of fashion, just the right place and time for it to be appreciated." 

"What the hell does that even mean?"

"Look, when I'm out there -" Dennis fusses with his eyeliner, making sure the wings each extend to a perfect point. "When that performance begins it is a perfect sexual storm. Dark room, anarchic crowd, British man crooning about absolute pleasure. And there I am, in flawless form, too desirable for just one gender - girls go apeshit, Mac. I get enough numbers to plow my way through a month, and I'm not even the one on stage. Doctor Frank is a goddamn pioneer. His powers of seduction are a goalpost to aspire to, and I'm very proud of the strides I've made, to be honest."

"See, part of that sounds great, and the other part sounds a little gay, I'm just saying."

There's a pause. Mac's eyes widen as Dennis turns towards him, perfectly made up, corset hugging his abs. He swallows hard.

"It's a modern-day Jesus story, by the way."

"...is it?"

"A man ahead of his time and his disciples at a final supper." Dennis moves closer to him, mouth curled into a smirk, and Mac can see his skin is dusted with glitter. "With his message of universal love declared too extreme, he's betrayed and killed by his own after saying he's returning home."

"But that's like if Jesus's message was to bang dudes. That's-" It's getting a little warm, and it's annoying. Makes it hard to think. "You're twisting the...that's blasphemy. Or something." 

He leans in, a hand resting on Mac's bicep. "You know, a Frank needs a Rocky, and it's not like I could ask Charlie. Not the right type at all, he could never pull off gold briefs. But you'd be perfect."

With the lip pencil, Dennis's mouth is wine-dark offsetting gleaming teeth. Mac swallows again, resisting the urge to avert his eyes. "Wasn't that dude like a model?"

"And if we look like we're together, girls love dudes they think are unavailable."

"N-next time? Maybe?" Mac says unsteadily, not really wanting to talk about it anymore.

"Is that a promise?"

 _He only looks that good because he looks like half a girl,_ Mac thinks. _It's just wrong, tricking people like that. Getting dudes all confused._

"Aren't you going to be late?"

Dennis shrugs and slowly pulls away, smoothing down his fishnets. "Suit yourself. Don't come crying when I bring a gorgeous co-ed home and you're out in the cold."

"They're probably all gross with sex diseases!"

He just laughs as he heads out the door.

When Dennis stumbles back home that night at four am - alone, but suspiciously disheveled - Mac wonders why he hasn't brought the girl like usual. This means a gap in the video collection, which Dennis always complains about. It means no rubbing Mac's face in it, which means Mac has no idea who to chase after a week later after Dennis has thoroughly broken her heart.

It bugs him for hours afterwards, and he's not sure why he's much more jealous this way. It should be so much harder to covet a girl he can see.

Instead of this way, when he could imagine just about anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dennis is, of course, attending The Rocky Horror Picture Show.


End file.
